Linguistic diversity and redistribution

This paper investigates the effect of linguistic diversity on redistribution in a broad cross-section of countries. We use the notion of "linguistic distances" and show that the commonly used fractionalization index, which ignores linguistic distances, yields insigni cant results. However, once distances between languages are accounted for, linguistic diversity has both a statistically and economically signi cant effect on redistribution. With an average level of redistribution of 9.5 percent of GDP in our data set, an increase by one standard deviation in the degree of diversity lowers redistribution by approximately one percentage point. We also demonstrate that other measures, such as polarization and peripheral heterogeneity, provide similar results when linguistic distances are incorporated.The authors wish to thank the nancial support of the Comunidad de Madrid (grant 06/HSE/0157/2004) and of the Fundación BBVAPublicad

Pure Redistribution and the Provision of Public Goods

We study pure redistribution as a device to increase cooperation and efficiency in the provision of public goods. Experimental subjects play a two-stage game. The first stage is the standard linear public goods game. In the second stage, subjects can redistribute payoffs among other subjects in their group. We find that cooperation and efficiency increases substantially with this redistribution scheme, and that the redistribution option is popular. Our results provide an intuitive explanation for why an imposed redistribution rule, as proposed by Falkinger (1996), is capable of sustaining cooperation in the provision of public goods.experiment; public goods; redistribution

Inequality

This paper reviews five striking facts about inequality across countries. As Kuznets (1955) famously first documented, inequality first rises and then falls with income. More unequal societies are much less likely to have democracies or governments that respect property rights. Unequal societies have less redistribution, and we have little idea whether this relationship is caused by redistribution reducing inequality or inequality reducing redistribution. Inequality and ethnic heterogeneity are highly correlated, either because of differences in educational heritages across ethnicities or because ethnic heterogeneity reduces redistribution. Finally, there is much more inequality and less redistribution in the U. S. than in most other developed nations.

Education and Redistribution

Education is a very expensive way of carrying out redistributive policies. This is because those who have been more favoured by nature/luck are also those who benefit most from the investment in education: if educational resources are distributed according to the ability to benefit, as efficiency would require, the better off should receive more, which is clearly inequitable. Some counterintuitive features of the provision of education can be understood in terms of this conflict between equity and efficiency: electoral preferences for the provision of university subsidies, the distributive consequences of admission tests, and the interaction between house prices and the quality of schools.

Redistribution Does Matter Growth and Redistribution for Poverty Reduction

Poverty, Inequality, Growth, Redistribution

Tax and Education Policy in a Heterogeneous Agent Economy: What Levels of Redistribution Maximize Growth and Efficiency?

INCOME REDISTRIBUTION; HETEROGENOUS AGENTS; INEQUALITY; GROWTH; REDISTRIBUTION; EDUCATION FINANCE.

Demand for Redistribution, Support for the Welfare State, and Party Identification in Austria

This paper describes subjective wage inequality and the demand for redistribution in Austria using individuals' estimates of occupational wages from the International Social Survey Program. Although these estimates differ widely across individuals, the data clearly show that most individuals would like to decrease wage inequality, relative to the level of inequality which they perceive to exist. The empirical analysis also shows that the demand for redistribution is strongly associated not only with variables describing self-interested motives for redistribution, but also with perceptions of and social norms with respect to inequality. Further, the demand for redistribution is a strong predictor for whether an individual is supportive of redistribution by the state. On the other hand, however, I find almost no evidence for an empirical association between the demand for redistribution and individuals' party identification.subjective inequality measures, demand for redistribution, support for the welfare state, party identification